Page:Twenty-one Days in India.djvu/164

152 matters. I take our Doctor as I find him, rough and allopathic; but I am sure he might be improved in course of two or three generations. We may leave this, however, to Nature and the Army Medical Department. Reform is not my business. I have no proposals to offer that will accelerate the progress of the Doctor towards a higher type.

Happily his surgical and medicinal functions claim only a portion of his time. He is in charge of the district gaol, a large and comfortable retreat for criminals. Here he is admirable. To some eight or nine hundred murderers, robbers, and inferior delinquents he plays the part of maître d'hôtel with infinite success. In the whole country side you will not find a community so well bathed, dressed, exercised, fed, and lodged as that over which the Doctor presides. You observe on every face a quiet Quakerish air of contentment. Every inmate of the gaol seems to think that he has now found a haven of rest.

If the sea-horse on the ocean Own no dear domestic cave, Yet he slumbers without motion On the still and halcyon wave: